How to Make a Cucumber Trellis

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How to Make a Cucumber Trellis

Overview

Cucumbers are vigorous vines that will stretch and crawl all over your garden, climbing over your other plants like an invasive weed, unless you provide a trellis or grow the bush type of species. If you build a trellis for the vines, you will find that the cucumber vine is quite attractive with its pretty yellow flowers against the dark green leaves. A simple trellis can easily be built with some common supplies.

Step 1

Decide on a spot in your garden for your garden trellis. It must be in a spot where it will not shade other plants so look for an area on the north side of your garden. Cucumbers need really good drainage so rake some soil into a hill about about 4 feet wide and 18 inches high.

Step 2

Place two of the bamboo poles opposite each other at the outside of the hill you formed. Press them into the ground about 5-6 inches deep and then hold them together at the top with a section of twine. It might want to fall over, so do the same thing with two more poles centered on either side between them and have them lean against each other for support.

Step 3

Add the rest of the four remaining poles so that you have formed a tepee with bamboo sticks held together about 6 inches down from the top. Straighten the whole trellis so that the intersection of all the poles is centered and the trellis is not leaning to one side and tighten the twine to hold it secure.

Step 4

Plant the cucumber seeds around the sides of the hill, just inside the bamboo poles about six-inches up from the ground. Usually just three or four plants per hill is plenty. As they grow they will extend their tendrils up the poles and the plant will cover the trellis within just a couple of weeks, and the cucumbers will hang down for easy picking.

Things You'll Need

8 bamboo poles (1 inch thick, 8 feet long)

Twine

References

Cucumber - Watch Your Garden Grow

Reaching for the Sky with Vertical Plants

Keywords:
cucumber trellis, garden support, vegetables green

About this Author

Based in Maryland, Heidi Braley, currently writes for local and online media outlets. Some of Braley's articles from the last 10 years are in the "Oley Newsletter," "Connections Magazine," GardenGuides and eHow.com. Braley's college life included Penn State University and Villanova University with her passions centered in nutrition and botany.